Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and his assistant both seriously injured their ribs in a bus accident that took place early Sunday morning, as the band was on tour in the northeast. According to band webmaster Karl Koch, a tour bus carrying Cuomo, his wife and daughter and two assistants lost control after hitting a patch of black ice on I-90 outside of Albany, NY. The bus went off the highway and fell 8-10 feet into a ravine. Koch writes on weezer.com, "Kudos to the driver for somehow keeping things as level as they could be - surely this story would have been far more tragic if not for his actions."

Cuomo's wife and daughter and their nanny were unharmed, but Rivers himself and his assistant Sarah Kim were thrown from their bunks. Cuomo has sustained three cracked ribs, "minor but very painful internal damage" and hurt his lower leg. Sarah has fractured two ribs and a lower vertebrae as well.

Koch says the bus was a mess inside and its sliding interior doors were fused shut, with EMTs needing to use the jaws of life and a ladder to remove Cuomo and Kim from the rear of the bus. He says that Kim has a "3-4 week period of extreme pain awaiting her as she heals from her injuries the only way possible, with time and gritted teeth. Rivers was transported to a larger area hospital where he remains under observation. He is resting about as comfortably as could be expected now, and we were relieved to hear that surgery is unlikely. Hopefully tomorrow the docs will have more info. You don't fool around with internal injury. Whatever happens, we forsee some gritted teeth in his future too."

As one would expect, the final dates of Weezer's December tour have been cancelled: tonight in Boston, Wednesday night in Washington, D.C. and Thursday night in Camden, NJ. Koch says the band will attempt to reschedule them in the future. There are a handful of west coast shows set for mid-January, but the fate of those dates are currently unknown.

You can read Koch's account of the events, along with pictures of the bus after the crash, at weezer.com here.